With the beginning of the 2025/26 season, Rainer Simon became the Artistic Director of Neuköllner Oper. From 2022 to 2025, he served as Artistic Director of the festival Schall&Rausch as well as Head of Off-Site Venues at the Komische Oper Berlin. At the Komische Oper Berlin, he was the Artistic Director’s Advisor under Barrie Kosky from 2012 to 2022. Prior to that, he worked as a freelance production manager and dramaturg on various independent theatre and music theatre projects, including at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, the Spielart Festival in Munich, and the Zürcher Theaterspektakel.
Rainer Simon studied philosophy, musicology, and theatre studies in Berlin, Munich, and Paris, as well as music and theatre directing at the Theaterakademie August Everding in Munich. He also participated in the Executive Master in Arts Administration education program at the University of Zurich. He completed his doctorate at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg under Clemens Risi and worked from 2008 to the end of 2010 as a research associate in the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center “Cultures of the Performative”.
He was a founding and board member of ZMB e.V. (Association for Contemporary Music Theatre Berlin) and served multiple times on the jury and advisory board of BAM!, the festival for contemporary music theatre in Berlin. In 2021, he was a jury member for Music Theatre Now, the international music theatre prize of the International Theatre Institute. Rainer Simon is the author and editor of several monographs and edited volumes, including Labor oder Fließband (2013), Konzert der Sinne (2018), and Staging Gender (2019).
